Page 72 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

62 Chapter 3

people of the "threat" Iraq posed to the United States and its allies. Vice
President Dick Cheney argued that, "there is no doubt [emphasis added] that
Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destru~tion."'~
Throughout the accusations and build up to war, Iraq claimed that it did not
possess any WMD. In a letter to the United Nations in September 2002, Saddam
Hussein stated, "[President Bush] presented utmost distortions on the nuclear,
biological, and chemical threats" possessed by lraq.'O Predictably, few
Americans paid any attention to Saddam Hussein's warnings.
As discussed earlier, the White House worked to create the impression that
war was a "last resort" if Iraq did not "rid itself of WMD." On September 24,
2002, President Bush stated, "We love peace. Military is not our first ~hoice."~'
Bush urged the United Nations to draft and pass a new Security Council
resolution condemning Saddam for possessing WMD and supporting the
introduction of a weapons inspection team into Iraq. The team was to enter the
country soon after, although they were unable to find any evidence of hidden
weapons of mass destruction.
Despite Bush's warnings of the threat posed by Iraq, there were many
skeptical individuals, agencies, and reports suggesting that the assertion that Iraq
possessed WMD was tenuous at best. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
issued a report in September 2002 stating that there is "no reliable information
on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons or whether Iraq
has or will establish its chemical warfare agent production fa~ilities."'~ Scott
Ritter, former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq throughout the 1990s, reiterated
this point stating: "Since 1998, Iraq has been fundamentally disarmed: 90-95
percent of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability has been verifiably
eliminated. This includes all of the factories used to produce chemical,
biological, and nuclear weapons, and long-range ballistic missiles; the
associated equipment of these factories; and the vast majority of the products
coming out of these factorie~."~~
Many throughout the American media and political system had argued, in
contradiction to Ritter's assessment, that Saddam either produced WMD after
the inspectors left in 1998, or were able to hide them from inspectors during the
mid-1990s. Ritter countered such charges, prevalent in mainstream media
reporting, arguing that:
As with the nuclear weapons program, they'd [the Iraqi government] have to
start from scratch, having been deprived of all equipment, facilities, and
research. They'd have to procure the complicated tools and technology required
through front companies. This would be detected. The manufacture of chemical
weapons emits vented gases that would have been detected by now if they
existed.24
Periodically, the Bush administration made concessions that claims about Iraq's
possession of WMD were based, at least in part, on speculation. Dick Cheney
acquiesced to the fact that, as the New York Times reported, "the administration
could never know with precision the extent and type of weapons of mass
destru~tion."'~